Dena Pence Frantz photo by Regina Bryan

Sunday, July 4, 2004
"God is a Living God"
Job 12:7-10; Psalm 42; Luke 24:1-12
by Dena Pence Frantz

Why do you look for the living among the dead?” (Luke 24:5b)

We are looking this week at the theme of “Loving God and neighbor with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.” Jesus is answering a scribe who asked, “What is the greatest commandment?” As we heard last night, Jesus answers by speaking of how God is one God, of our need to love that God with all that we have within us, and of our need to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. “This,” Jesus concludes, “is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” (Mark 12:33)

It is the first part of Jesus’ answer that links to our scripture of today. “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love this God . . . .” (Mark 12:29b) The Lord, our God; the God that we worship; the God of Abraham, Sarah and Isaac; of Rebecca, Miriam & Moses; the God of the Hebrew people is one God. This is the God that you shall love with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. It is the basic and primary confession of the Judeo-Christian faith. This God who is the maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible, who has been revealed in the burning bush and on Mount Sinai, this is the one, says the New Testament writer, that we are to love with heart, soul, mind and strength.

And this God is a living God. Or as the writer of the gospel of Mark says: “God said to Moses, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ I am God not of the dead, but of the living.” (Mark 12:26b-27) In other words, I am not a god of the past who can be kept on a shelf, but a God of the present and the future who lives among and with you. I am a living God.

In our desires to know God, in our desires to make God our bulwark and our strength, in our desires to hold firmly to an unshakable faith, we can too easily miss this. God is a living God. Which means that God cannot be fixed on a page of rules and laws, of do’s and don’ts, that God cannot be pinned down like a bug to be studied as a dead object for the rest of time. God is living and is known through all that is living around us. God is the ground of all being and the Word of living presence.

I don’t know about you, but my most successful arguments with my family are when I am alone in the shower. There, as I play out the argument in my head, I am brilliant, clear, and right. There, as I think ahead to all that I must to say to them, I am able to say it without being unduly hurtful or unfair. And, of course, in those pre-scripted arguments, the person I’m arguing with receives my words with a bowed head and a grateful sigh that it has all been so clearly explained. But for some reason the actual arguments never go that way. When I am facing a living, breathing, human being, they talk back. They have feelings and fears, and they counter my well-honed logic with things I haven’t thought of. They make their own points about what was going on and why it got so tangled. My arguments in the shower are my most successful because I don’t have to face the other person’s living, personal presence. When I am talking with a living person, I cannot predict or control what they are going to say or the affect of my words. When I am in a real conversation with a living human being, nothing goes according to the script.

In the same way, we cannot predict or control what God is going to say or do, no matter how well we know doctrine or scripture. God is a living presence that is beyond all our small ways of knowing and abstracting, and controlling.

Our God is God of the living; our God is a living God. Why do you seek the living among the dead?

In the midst of Job’s times of trial and suffering, he knew this well. Listen to Job 12:7-10: “But now ask the beasts, and let them teach you; And the birds fo the heavens, and let them tell you. Or speak to the earth, and let it teach you; And let the fish of the sea declare to you. ‘Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this; In whose hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of every human being?’”

In God’s hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being. Perhaps we need to be reminded of this by our times of scarcity and suffering, by our times of hardship and pain, because in the times of plenty we can too easily believe that it is in our hands that our life dwells. In God’s hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being. When our children have been taken from us, when our friends and family have left us, when our means of supporting ourselves is gone, when our home and our possessions have been lost in the ravages of war, we know clearer than we can at any other time that “in God’s hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.” It is an affirmation born out of hardship, because it is only through hardship that we realize how little power we actually have to prevent tragedy or control what happens to us. It is an affirmation born out of suffering because it is in suffering that we recognize the utter goodness and delight of being that we have lost. Life is no longer lukewarm or bland. Life is vivid and desirable.

Psalm 42 speaks of it this way: “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” (vs. 1-2) A god that is dead or made of stone cannot comfort us. A god that is fixed on the page or in rule books is a rote and mechanical god. A god that is only known in the past cannot give us living water for the present. Our confession as Christians is that God is a living God. Simon Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi was that Jesus was “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matt. 16:13) Not the son of the stone god, not the son of the god who dwells in a particular land, but the son of the Living God who was revealed in the person and actions of Jesus of Nazareth and who continues to be revealed to us through the Spirit.

Our God is a living God. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

The women, in caring for the dead body of the one that they loved and followed, went to the tomb with spices. Perplexed, they found the stone rolled away, the body gone, and two men standing before them in dazzling clothes. “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, he has risen.”

These are the words for our church today. The angels of the living, risen God are before us, inviting us forward: “Why do we seek the living among the dead?”

As children of the anabaptist and pietist tradition, we, the Church of the Brethren, are a church born out of hardship and intense commitment. Our forefathers and foremothers faced persecution as they committed themselves to the living God of the New Testament. Throughout the course of our history, our faith in the living God has sometimes ebbed and sometimes flowed strong. When we have placed our faith in past traditions and structures to save us, our faith has been weak, for it was placed in the non-living, inanimate parts of the church. When we have placed our faith and confidence in a living God who, through the enlivening Spirit leads us forward, our faith has been strong, for it has been placed in that transcendent, ultimate reality that is beyond and above and around us that is more than we can ever be, do or know. Our God is a living God; why do we seek the living among the dead?

Brothers and sisters, true hope for the church is not in finding the right structure or the right process or the right belief system, or even the right leader: true hope for the church is in following the living God. This cuts across both the liberal and the conservative agendas because it is not an agenda that we seek but the presence of the living God.

Brothers and sisters, I know that those of you who lead us administratively, who have dedicated your lives to the good and proper work of the church, are squirming in your seats, saying “But we will have no church if we have no stable structures.” (I forgot to mention that another time when I like to argue is when I am preaching because there, too, no one can talk back, at least not in our white churches.) But the question is undoubtedly there: “What will become of the church if we don’t have faith in our current structures?” I don’t know. But then, look at the other side: what has become of our church as we have put our faith in outward ways of doing things and forgot to follow the living God?

Following the living God will be messy; it will not be neat; the way will not always be clear, the road will not always be easy. But we will celebrate life and delight in the living God. And we will no longer seek God in a tomb.

The living God will be known when we give hospitality to strangers, to those society rejects, to the poor, the needy, the prostitutes and the unclean. The living God is among us as we give disaster relief, as we send peace envoys, as we give cups of cold water.

The living God will be known when we worship in song and story, raising our hands to the God who is beyond us and all our endeavors. The living God is already among us as we sing and pray together, seeking to learn from each other’s worship, living into the presence of the Spirit.

The living God will be known when we pray deeply in our hearts, alone and not for show, when we seek to listen to the Spirit who comes to us in the midst of the storm and in the midst of the silence. The living God is already among us as we pray and study, as we seek to discern what the mind of Christ is for this time and this place.

The living God will be known as we break bread with all, for all are invited to the table. The living God is already known among us as we gather with those that are not a part of our usual social group, as we eat with those with whom we think we have little in common.

The living God is known among us as we live our everyday lives in fullness and delight in God’s presence and in active love for others.

The living God is known as incarnate when we love God will all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength. And when we love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Do not seek God in an empty tomb; God is not there; God, the incarnate one, has risen!

God is a Living God!

Allelujah, Amen.